Tough Leaders for Tough Times

Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and user experience at Google Inc., speaks at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco on Sept. 29, 2010.

It’s hard to generate much sympathy for people who are making tens of millions of dollars a year. But at least these CEOs can justify their paychecks by taking on seemingly impossible challenges. They’ve all fairly recently taken over as the top executives at high-profile businesses that lose money hand over fist, have been written off for dead, or that don’t seem to have much reason to exist in the modern-day marketplace.